Friday, May 25, 2007

TIM FLANNERY PROPOSES ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT

"The bill that you and I pay might go up by 30 per cent, which sounds like a lot," he said.

"But if you and I can't make efficiency gains of 30 per cent in our house, there's something wrong. We all waste a lot of electricity and I have no doubt most of us can make those sort of cuts."

A closer look at what Flannery actually said reveals he's expecting a much bigger rise and doesn't give a damn about the consequences:

TONY JONES: Let's try and understand the price. The price is the dollar amount that you pay for each tonne of carbon dioxide you emit into the atmosphere after you exceed your limit. That's the point at which your penalties begin as it were?

TIM FLANNERY: That's right.

TONY JONES: What do you think it should be?

TIM FLANNERY: I think it probably should be around $50 per tonne. Working group three of the intergovernmental panel on climate change did modelling and $50 a tonne gets you significant reductions and that would equate to about a doubling of the wholesale price which would be about maybe 30 per cent of the retail price. So the bill that you and I pay might go up 30 per cent which sounds like a lot but when you think about it if you can't make 30 per cent efficiency gains in your house I don't know, there's something wrong. We all waste a lot of electricity and I think there's no doubt that most of us can make those sorts of cuts.

TONY JONES: Except we've already established if the drought continues and electricity prices already go up by pretty much that amount, they could then go up vastly further, could they not?

TIM FLANNERY: I suppose they could go up another 30 per cent or so. At that point yes you'd have trouble getting those efficiency gains in households.

TONY JONES: Would that affect the economy, though? Because that's what industry is arguing?

TIM FLANNERY: That's the great question. We'll know pretty soon. The price will go up and we'll see what the impacts will be.

Let's run an experiment with Australia's economy and see what happens. Oh well, wrecking the economy should drive down emissions. The guy is a moron.